Tampa Bay Devil Rays 2 Washington Nationals 6 (July 2, 2006)
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0 commentsOrtiz kept the Devil Rays off the board until the fifth inning, but Seo was gotten to early (Ortiz faced just three batters in the first). Of course, Seo wasn't helped by the Devil Rays fielders, who ended up giving up 3 unearned runs off of four errors. With Soriano given a day off, Vidro lead off for the team. Vidro was up and out in a hurry, lining out to center to start off the game. Clayton then doubled with one out, but Johnson flied out for the second out of the game. With two outs, Zimmerman, the Southeast fan pick, hits his eleventh home-run of the year. The score, with two outs in the bottom of the first inning, is now 2-0 in favor of the Nationals. Ward hits to the second baseman, for what should be an easy out, but the second baseman, Cantu misplays the ball and Ward is safe at first. This will immediately come back to haunt Cantu as Ward scores off of Guillen’s double. Seo, rattled, walks Anderson, but gets Schneider to ground out to end the inning, and the damage. End of 1 inning: 3-0 Nationals.
Oritz faces four batters in the second, giving up just one hit, but no runs. Seo faces three batters and gets all three out in the bottom of the second inning. This pattern is repeated in the third inning (with Seo facing four batters in the third), but the Nationals add to their run total with a two-out double by Vidro in the fourth inning, which scores Schneider, who had reached base on a walk. The Devil Rays finally get back into the game when Crawford hits his eleventh double of the year in the fifth inning with two outs, scoring Perez (who lead off the inning with a bunt single). End of 5: score: Nationals 4, Devil Rays 1.
Seo is lifted after throwing 90 pitches (57 for strikes) in five innings of work. Jon Switzer takes over the pitching duties for the Devil Rays in the sixth inning. He gives up 1 hit and strikes out 1, but errors allow two more Nationals runs. Anderson singled to lead off the inning, but Schneider struck out to follow Anderson. Ortiz moves the runner to third and makes it to second base himself due to a throwing error. Vidro then gets the second out of the inning by flying out. Switzer throws a wild pitch with runners on third and second with two outs, allowing Anderson and Ortiz to score (though Ortiz managed to score during this play due to a throwing error by the catcher, who had retrieved the ball and misfired it to Switzer covering the plate). Score at the end of six: Nationals 6, Devil Rays 1. The Devil Rays will make it slightly more interesting by scoring a final run in the ninth inning, pushing the score totals to 6-2. Nationals win 6-2, moving to an overall record of 35-48, and the Devil Rays fall to 35-47.
Date
July 2, 2006
